EFFICIENT COOLING SYSTEM FOR SUPERCONDUCTING GANTRY MAGNET

Superconductors are used in high-energy physics to generate large magnetic fields. The flowing current is progressively increased to its nominal value to achieve the target magnetic field. During the ramp-up progress, the varying magnetic field induces Eddy currents within the superconductor, resulting in losses generating heat, which may cause the superconductor to quench (losing its superconducting properties). To prevent this, the current ramping (up and down) process cannot be repeated too often, to leave time.for the crycooler to extract the heat. This process is not linearly efficient, with the cryocooler better extracting heat when there is a lot of it. We propose to add a magnetocaloric material to extract faster the remaining heat, allowing a diminution of the waiting/cooling time between two current ramping cycles.